The Wicked Problem of Documenting Counterinsurgencies : a case study of US province reports written during the Vietnam War / by Eliot Wilczek.
Wicked problems are societal problems that are complex, vitally important, ill-defined, and whose resolution is based on political judgment. Using a historical case study, this dissertation aims to examine the relationship between how institutions understand and document wicked problems and how wick...
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| Format: | Thesis Book |
| Language: | English |
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| Summary: | Wicked problems are societal problems that are complex, vitally important, ill-defined, and whose resolution is based on political judgment. Using a historical case study, this dissertation aims to examine the relationship between how institutions understand and document wicked problems and how wicked problems can be understood as record keeping challenges. The case study focuses on the province report, a monthly narrative produced by US province advisory teams during the Vietnam War. A combination of historical research methods, record keeping research in the tradition of the modern diplomatic, and content analysis are used to investigate this case study. This dissertation revolves around two core themes: 1) wicked problems as record keeping challenges and 2) institutional record keeping effectiveness. Within the first theme, findings demonstrate that: 1) creating thick description at scale is one of the fundamental challenges of describing and defining wicked problems; 2) individuals and record keeping rules come to the fore in shaping the content of institutional records in different circumstances; and 3) institutions use their record keeping practices to normalize wicked problems into familiar concepts. The second theme, institutional record keeping effectiveness, encapsulates findings that demonstrate: 1) the key role that thoughtful analysis and concise, efficient, and timely records creation play in documenting wicked problems; and 2) the risk to institutions that careful and thoughtful record keeping becomes a burdensome task. The significant of this dissertation is its placement of archival and information science at the center of the effort to understand and address wicked problems by demonstrating how grappling with wicked problems is, to a great extent, a record keeping act. This dissertation also makes a significant contribution to the archival literature by framing organizational record keeping as a series of tradeoffs, compromises, and struggles. This framework can facilitate a richer understanding of the complexities that members of an organization face when documenting dynamic and multifaceted environments. |
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| Physical Description: | 368 leaves ; 28 cm |
| Bibliography: | Bibliography: leaves 325-368. |